


toothpaste

by swallows (toska)



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cannibalism, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 14:24:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2776310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toska/pseuds/swallows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>— she goes home and washes her hands and washes her face and brushes her teeth, until there is no more red. p3p/dds crossover in which cannibalism happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	toothpaste

**Author's Note:**

  * For [samarecarm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/samarecarm/gifts).



> happy er belated birthday novas!!! love you lots, my vegas double threat
> 
> go raise hell
> 
> PLOT NOTES: I tweaked the storyline so this is not canon compliant. Also I tweaked the whole cannibalism thing, and the idea was that you take bits and pieces of the personalities of the people who devour, if that makes sense. Anyways, i hope you enjoy!

PART ONE

i.

She devours.

ii.

Something went wrong with her persona— she doesn’t pull the trigger to call out her persona, she pulls the trigger to be the persona.

And when Ikutsuki looks at her, brows furrowed as if he wants to pluck her in a lab and dissect her, decrypt her brain for clues as if she is corrupted by the gun— not just defiled,deformed, but positively deranged.

She hides her snarl with a smile and holds her fire.

No good comes from pulling the trigger too soon.

iii.

It’s daybreak when she realized what she has done.

It’s still the night of the first full moon, and they managed to stop the train and head back to her dorms. But— but she isn’t in her dorm anymore. She furrowed her brows in confusion and glances around. There is a man laying mangled in front of her, and she can see more bones than skin and organs.

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and looks at the blood that comes off on it, and leaves.

It wouldn’t do much to worry about it now, she thinks.

iv.

She doesn’t tell anybody, it wouldn’t do anyone any good. No, this kind of secret is best kept to herself. (But she’s also terrified, because she is a monster, more of a freak than any other person in this building).

She doesn't need a gun to transform. This power is all her own.

v.

It takes sometime for people to get used to it, this abnormality.  Still they named her leader— she was the strongest out of the lot of them— the only one who was able to tirelessly climb up the stairs at night

They get through the levels quickly– alert of the chains rattling.

vi.

It gets easier when Mitsuru gives her permission to go out at night. She’ll pick boys off, the dumb ones who hang around in tough guy alleyways and repulsive ones with the cocky grins whose hands are halfway up her thigh— she’ll eat them

They don’t digest well, and it isn’t until later, that she realizes that they taste better when you have a bond.

vii.

Her first kill was Saori. The pretty upperclassmen who was too pretty, too good, for anybody at school. The pretty upperclassman who was in charge of the health club. Nurturing, caring.

She didn’t mean to kill her.

But Saori was leaving— had already been withdrawn from school and requested to meet up for one last cup for coffee; how could she say no?

It's late and they end up kissing; Saori's lips feel sweet and warm against her own. They pull into an alleyway and the last thing Minako remembers is tugging on Saori's lower lip, biting it.

She doesn't remember transforming. Aside from the first night, she's always been conscious of it.

This time was different. She reached out to Saori's corpse, dipping her finger to taste some blood left over. It's sweet; much better than the blood of the boys out back.

She takes on role of the school's announcer, the next week.

viii.

There were others too. Hidetoshi-senpai of student council, who confessed to her a week ago. Bebe from France who got her to carrying a little emergency sewing kit on her person. The elderly couple who owned the bookstore and mourned their dead son. The monk, who mourned the loss of his family.

But they were some she couldn't devour. The dying young boy, for one. Or the little girl, who she shared a Mad Bull with.

It was kind of like playing god, she decided. Who lived, and who died? But it left her full of guilt, grasping for some justification only to none.

Eventually, she feared. That she’ll run out of people to spend time with and then they’ll all know.

ix.

No one is suspicious. She hangs out with certain people, the kind of people who no one would bat an eyelash at if they disappeared without a trace.

And it’s not like she hanged out with them all the time, and then stopped. It’s a gradual thing, where she spent time with them slowly. And the ones she didn’t kill? She stopped hanging out with them out of guilt.

It’s better to let them go.

x.

She goes back to devouring boys and girls all out and about when the dark hour strikes. She goes to places no one really expects her to go and even though the taste isn’t that satisfying, it quenches the hunger. (They make her mind wilder, she thinks. She thinks about her growing interest in motorbikes, and how Tanaka laughs and calls her a “dirty old man,” and how she laughs back).

She goes home and washes her hands and washes her face and brushes her teeth, until there is no more red.

xi.

She doesn’t get too close to her team, despite the voice in her head urging to get closer and closer and closer till their hearts are in her stomach.

Then at some point, she stopped resisting. She went out for ramen with Junpei on Tuesdays and Thursdays, she helped Fuuka with cooking, she went shopping with Yukari on weekends; she flirted with Akihiko— licking her lips as he flushes when she gets too close, he’s appetizing, she thinks.

She falls in love with Shinjiro, and his warm, wistful ways. He’s different, she thinks. He’s more human than any of them. And when he died, she couldn’t breathe— it’s only when they leave that she takes a deep breath and shudders.

xii.

Aigis, Minako thinks, is a godsend for people like her. There’s no yearning for blood and flesh, and for once she feels so normal. It’s silly, isn’t it? How easily normalcy comes, when you’re hanging out with a robot.

But then Death knocks on her door, and everything changes.

xiii.

Ryoji Mochizuki walks in the classroom— and doesn’t fade away with the rest of the crowd.

He’s some important, she realizes.

Someone worth knowing.

And when he locks eyes with her, she’s sure that he feels it too.  

**  
  
**

PART TWO

i.

He is a collector. He is the one who creeps up in crypts and coffins and hidden alleyways and collects the souls. And then he eats them, and watches these souls become a part of him.

He is a parody of sorts— he is Death.

ii.

Out of all the personalities, it is this one that appealed to him the most. It's friendly, it's amiable, it's— human.

It’s a personality he’s molded, after endless centuries of devouring the patron kings and their samurais, the bankers, the bakers, and the candlestick makers. The gentlemen, the greasers. It's formed by tired students and overworked doctors, the deadbeats and the slackers.

And it's name is Ryoji Mochizuki.

iii.

Minako Arisato has his eyes— and she looks at him, as if he is hers.

This doesn’t surprise him, how quickly they have clicked— the closer they become, the louder voices of beings much greater than him, ring in his ear.

iv.

He charms her. With silly quips and cheesy lines. And she charms him, it turns out, she’s always been a ravenous girls when it comes to food. She charms him, with her willingness to open up to others, her ability to fight the urge.

He wonders how she feels about him.

Would she eat him, if she could?

v.

Ryoji Mochizuki, in many ways, is a lie. But he is also the truth.

The truth is a paper folded in his pocket that keeps shrinking everytime he talks to her, and everytime he speaks, it gets harder to find it. And when he does find the crumpled up paper, everything is so illegible that he chokes on his words.

It didn't start out that way. The paper wasn't even folded, in the beginning.

vi.

"You retained parts of me." He confesses. "On that night, ten years ago. One was Pharos, and the other was hunger."

"Pharos?" She questions.

"The young boy, you met on your first night." He explains. "He was the part that was trying to suppress the hunger. He didn't succeed. The hunger was too strong, that part of me was too strong. But your body is not like mine, and cannot digest what I can— so it chose devour what was tangible. That part activated when you summon your persona."

Minako doesn't look upset, or mad. "Okay," she says, as if that was that. But that was true, there was nothing he could do about it, nothing no one could do about it.

"There is one way to end this," he says, and tries not to flinch as she perks up.

He succeeds.

"Kill me."

She falters, but does not say anything. "It'd kill the part of me in you." He says. "When I die, the souls— they'll be released. You'll be free."

"What about you?"

He shakes his head and smiles at her. "There has never been a happy ending for me anyways."

vii.

His name is Thanthos, and she chose to let him live.

viii.

She probably doesn't remember this, but he talked to her before. Ten years ago.

He wonders if she remembers that she saved his life once before, as he slips the ring on her finger.

PART THREE

i.

Her team is horrified. She is not surprised, but it still hurts. They quiver back, and their eyes narrow as if they are really seeing her for the first time.

She has killed, and she will kill again. She knows this isn’t right— this is not ethical— that this is something that she should have reported earlier, but she can’t bring herself to regret it. It’s the only way she could have lived, it’s animalistic urges, it’s her, but it’s not.

It is Junpei that accepts her first, with a shaky laugh. The rest follow suit, but she knows that nothing can be the same.

Aigis comes around the last, as if she’s struggling to grasp the formula. “You’re human, but you’re not.”

Minako smiles back. “Just like you.”

Aigis’s mouth curves up a bit, but Minako knows that she is still unsettled. “Just like me.”

ii.

It happens like something out of a fairytale, she thinks, with her lips quirked up. Climbing the tower to save the world, and the prince. Only this princess is cursed with a fate of an horrible beast, and the prince isn’t any better off.

iii.

“We’re still friends, y’know.” Junpei says, “despite your weird monster habits.”

Minako’s lip quirk up at this.

“You— you’re still you. And I— _we_ — know you.” He shoves his hand in his jacket, and looks at her. Minako bites her lip. They haven’t really looked at her, in what seems like a long time. “And we got your back.”

“Thanks.”

iv.

No one really loses their will to live, not really; not ever. This is human nature, we’re all just grasping for something to grab onto, to not let go of. This is the truth. It's a truth that has become clearer over time, a truth that she sees with every ounce of flesh that she consumes. 

The gods, she thinks, must be blind if that can't see this. 

v.

There are three kinds of death. The first one involves you running away, grasping on loose ends, holding on till your dying breath. The second one is an abrupt one, the kind that happens on impact. And the third? Well, it’s the kind of death that you embrace.

But this is not death.

Not really.

Not at all.

She puts the gun to her head and clicks the trigger.

She activates the Great Seal.

She doesn’t turn.

vi.

She remembers then.

Nobody knows this about her, but she has a brother. He takes after their father— aloof, but kind. Then again, her entire family was of that sort.

Her entire family was gone.

She doesn’t remember much, but she remembers looking Death in the eyes. He sounds nice, with a sleepy, raspy voice. It’s a sorrowful kind of voice; one in which everything he says sounds like an apology.

She doesn’t understand why.

vii.

She wakes up and she’s not hungry anymore. And the days go by fast, and no one really remembers, but her. Aigis looks on the outside, oddly— but Minako can’t bring herself to talk to her. Who know what will happen then?

But still, there is this quiet stirring nostalgia resting within her. It’s a nostalgia for something that was never there in the first place; she wonders if this is what her school days could have been.

What they should have been.

viii.

She’s very tired. She calls it a night, earlier and earlier— it’s getting harder for her to keep her strength up.

Aigis knocks on her door and talks. “Human, but not. Isn’t that what you said to me— months ago? I understand, and I’m sorry.”

Minako blinks, not understanding. Why should she be sorry? She did nothing wrong. Aigis was perfect, nuts and bolts and all. Sure she had a screw loose, but who didn’t in this motley crew.

“I was supposed to protect you, but I didn’t— I forgot my own mission. I forgot that I was supposed to protect you. You’re still human. You’ve always been human.”

“You’ve always been human, too.” She replies, wiping a tear from Aigis’s eyes.

“You’ve probably been more human than the rest of us. You just didn’t know it.”

ix.

Aigis’s lap is very warm; the voices are fading away.

She closes her eyes.

x.

Man regresses upon death. He goes from a monster, to a man, to a child. Man cycles upon death. He goes from child, to man, to monster.

But this is not death. She is not dead. There are no monsters, there are no shifting of forms, there is no hunger.

But Death is with her, in her. But Saori-senpai, Hidetoshi-senpai, Bebe, and the elderly couple from the bookstore are not. In her mind, she tells them sorry, sorry, sorry because she knows that this is the sort of bond that can never be repaired.

And then, ten years later, she finds herself understanding Death.

xi.

Ryoji offers her a gentle smile, squeezes her hand. This time there is no mask, between them. No hunger tying them down.

She squeezes his hand back in return, her grip strong.

His hand is cold, but the ring on her finger feels so warm, she thinks, as she closes her eyes.

**  
FIN**

**Author's Note:**

> oh gosh im kinda iffy about the ending, but i am adamant on getting this completed today! I KEPT YOU WAITING LONG ENOUGH, NOVAS. 
> 
> also once again i continue my trend of ending stories with smiles
> 
> good god im a sap
> 
> i kinda wanted to talk about the people she has devoured more and go more into detail with that, but i just wasn't sure how to go about it- it's supposed to parallel death, but the weight is far more greater on her shoulders, i would think. 
> 
> regardless, i hope you all enjoyed!


End file.
